In grade school, there was only one thing that would get me out of bed early: the promise of a trip to the gas station before class time. Every week or so, I was somehow able to convince my parents to drive out of the way to my school so I could stop-off for a non-nutritious snack. For a few months, I went straight to the same spot on the shelf every time to grab a Turtle Pie!

You know those fruit pies that don’t live on an actual aisle at the grocery store? They’re usually just kind of in the middle of the row between milk and dog food? Imagine one of those filled with that delicious yellow goop from custard Dunkin’ Donuts instead of apples. Now, envision the outer layer is toxic green. It was a magical delight!

They knew how to market these things, too. The commercial featured some recycled clips from the show combined with shots of everyone’s favorite green mutants* as they sing a catchy rap featuring such lyrics as “Straight from the sewers to you / They’re mondo-delicious; you know that’s true / Because they’re filled with mutagen goo!” Wait, what? Green stuff from the sewers became a breakfast food? Why the heck did I try this stuff in the first place? Oh, right. Because each pie came with an amazing turtle sticker!

This may or may not be an actual screen shot from the commercial.

There were five stickers total, one of each individual member and then a team pose. By the time I finished the pie, the stickers were usually covered in a healthy coating of sticky mutagen goo. I recently found a pile of these for sale and knew exactly what they were! My excitement was supercharged, as I thought the stickers would lead to an ancient stock of pies. No, just hundreds and hundreds of the bonus prizes. Yes, I would have eaten a 22 year old pie if I had found one. Instead, I just came home with some stickers.

They were pretty committed to the yellow color scheme. From the goop, to the wrappers, and through to the stickers. They were also dedicated to the complete junk food factor surrounding the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise at the time, too. There were gummy snacks, cookies, chips, cereal, pasta shapes, chalky candy, and of course pizza. I guess somewhere along the line a parent task-force fought back and we were force fed a line of total crap from Master Splinter himself as he held up a pack of yogurt and proclaimed “Turtles cannot live on pizza alone”. Luckily, no kid at the time bought into that message!

My 3rd grade fan art looked better than this animation.

PopRewind recently reached out to @Hostess_Snacks on Twitter to gauge the likelihood of this treat returning to promote the 2014 movie. They responded, “No plans for a Ninja Turtle pie return :(. But chin up! Hostess will never rule out future production of any product! :)” We, as expected, reminded them in a follow-up to how delighted people would be if they made a come back. If they do hit store shelves again, we won’t take all the credit, but you better show some gratitude around these parts!

Until then, you will have to settle for the overflow of do-it-yourself turtle pie recipe videos on YouTube. We haven’t been that adventurous, yet, but you never know where a lonely Friday evening could take you during cold and flu season!

* This statement has me curious if there are any green mutants in the Marvel universe. Are there? Polaris… kind of? Are Doop and Mojo mutants or other worldly creatures? Did this topic just get too nerdy?